art, design and textiles by Julia Laing

This week the notebooks I ordered came back from the printers and I’m really happy with how bright and crisp they look. The cover designs come from photographs I took of some of my textile creations. They are A6 size and have blank white pages inside for all your notes and doodles!
They’re not in my shop yet but they’ll be £3 each or £7.50 for a set of three.

Meanwhile, over on twitter I’m celebrating reaching 1000 followers with a little giveaway. The prize, you’ve guessed it, is a set of my new notebooks! For your chance to win follow me on twitter @materialised and retweet the giveaway tweet .

A random winner will be chosen from all the retweets tomorrow, Sunday 9th at 6pm GMT .

Hello, just popping by to show you a new brooch design I’ve been working on. As always I’ve used mainly recycled fabrics and leather to create the little foxes, which are available from my shop now. Perfect colours for autumn, don’t you think?

Here’s anotherenvelope at long last. If I carry on at this rate, the project might be finished in about 10 years! ;-)

Over the Summer I seriously lost my sewing mojo. I felt unmotivated and uninspired but promised myself that come September I’d begin again, regardless. So here I am, picking up the pieces.

The writing was cut from old magazine paper and machine stitched onto the background. I love the intensity of that turquoise colour so much! I used scraps of recycled cotton and linen fabrics to make it – they were placed onto a paper backing and hand stitched in place. The Suffolk puffs are made from silk, also hand-stitched in place. I like the contrast in texture between them and the paper base ‘fabric’…they seem to be erupting from it.

It feels better to have made a start…so let’s see if I can pick up some momentum now I’ve picked up my cloth, needle & thread.

Summer has been long and warm and lovely! It seemed important to unplug myself from the internet as much as possible over the last few weeks. Sometimes the speed and intensity of online life all gets a bit much and I want to slow down. I know it’s done me the power of good.

I’ve noticed also, that there’s always a lull in my Etsy shop in June and July…people have better things to do than think about shopping I suppose. Only natural. Now I’m trying to get back into the swing of things, seeing what I could do to improve my shop. I’ve added a few colourful wool purses this week and am planning on trying out some vintage items and supplies soon.

What I’ve spent the most time on though, over the last week, is making Etsy Treasuries…I’m completely hooked! It’s so enjoyable looking through all the shops to find the best items to add. My latest is called Edinburgh Rocks! All the items are chosen from shops in the Edinburgh Etsy Team. I was trying to think of what the black & white plus yellow and pink colour scheme reminded me of – it took a while but then I remembered, it’s the coconut ones, in Liquorice Allsorts. Ha! sweets! my subconscious is scarily predictable.

Please click on the image for details of any of the items included. Thanks x